Jesse Pollard Rejects Plea Offer

Jackson, Miss. Federal prosecutors considered offering a deferred prosecution for a former University of Alabama basketball player in a kidnapping conspiracy case, if his mother pleaded guilty.

Jesse Mae Brown Pollard and her son, Devonta Pollard, are charged with conspiring to kidnap a 6-year-old girl from East Kemper Elementary School in Scooba in April 2013. The girl was abducted, but not harmed.

U.S. District Judge William Barbour said that under the deferred prosecution, the government would have dismissed the indictment against Devonta Pollard if he stayed out trouble for two years.

Jesse Pollard said she didn't consider that a valid offer, because it would help her son, not her.

A lawyer for the elder Pollard says his client was "out of control of her own actions" at the time of the abduction.

Defense attorney Tom Turner made the statement Monday during opening arguments. Turner said she was under pressure from events in her life.

Trial was scheduled to begin Monday for both Pollards, but prosecutors said Devonta Pollard's trial was severed from his mother's and continued until a later date.

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